Audio Engineering

A Recording Connection Audio School Program

Get inside access to the music business as you apprentice (extern) under a legendary Audio Engineer inside their recording studio. Gain insider knowledge and connections during real sessions. It's how dreams become real.

Our Audio Engineering Program is available in all 50 states and Canada.

Click the map in your area to get more information and talk to a counselor.

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View Our Audio Engineering School Curriculum

Click on any of the boxes to get a feel for what you will learn and how you learn with us.

WHY OUR AUDIO SCHOOL PROGRAM WORKS

We get you into a world renowned, professional recording studio from day one, to learn on-the-job, or as some like to say, to “learn by doing”.

NO MATTER WHAT, A REAL RECORDING STUDIO IS WHERE YOU NEED TO BE IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT A CAREER IN AUDIO.

We are the audio program that trains you as an apprentice (extern) in a pro recording studio.

APPRENTICES LEARN ONE-ON-ONE, AND THEY LEARN AT THEIR PACE.

We train you where you live, or where you want to live.

STAY IN YOUR HOME CITY, OR MOVE TO A BIG CITY. IT’S UP TO YOU, BECAUSE WE ARE EVERYWHERE.

With the Recording Connection, you learn from a world renowned audio engineer or music producer—someone who has made classic music, current pop or electronic music, hip hop, R&B, jazz, classical, rock, country, punk rock, etc.

OUR TEACHERS ARE MAKING HIT MUSIC, TODAY, RIGHT NOW, AND THEY ARE WILLING TO TEACH YOU HOW TO DO THE SAME.

We are very affordable and work hard to keep you out of debt.

DEBT KILLS DREAMS; WE KEEP YOU OUT OF MAJOR DEBT.

We are world renowned for breaking people like you into the music business.

WE ARE KNOWN THROUGHOUT THE INDUSTRY AS THE GOOD GUYS—THE PROGRAM THAT CONNECTS YOU INTO THE MUSIC BUSINESS. AND WE HAVE THE ENDORSEMENTS AND STUDENTS’ SUCCESS STORIES TO SHOW YOU WE MEAN BUSINESS.

YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE IF:

You know you want to be an audio engineer, music producer, or both—or if you are curious about these careers.

You want to make or record, hip hop, country, rock, punk or any form of popular or avant-garde music.

You have no experience, but you do have an undying passion for music, sound, recording music, playing music, or writing songs.

If you have some experience (or even tons of it) and you are looking for more education.

Audio engineers can make a six-figure yearly income in any city in the world. There are many career opportunities available to those who are properly trained and connected in audio engineering, such as:

Chief Engineer

Staff Engineer

Assistant Engineer

Studio Owner

Additionally, many music producers, mixers, and mastering specialists are also audio engineers.

In short, for any career in audio, the best place to start is by learning the ins and outs of a recording studio as an audio engineer. In order to be successful, you MUST know how a real recording studio works where you meet real clients, you meet real engineers, and you work under real audio engineers and music producers.

A college recording studio, while it may look nice, is not the same as a professional recording studio. The Recording Connection Audio Institute Audio Engineering Program will place you in a real studio from day one.

To make it as an audio engineer, you also MUST know:

Digital audio

How microphones are designed and used

Correct microphone placement

The ins and outs of signal flow and patch bays

How analog consoles work

In-depth study of analog consoles

Audio processing

Pro Tools 8

Reason, Logic, or Ableton Live

Available audio plugins and how they work

Signal processing and compressors

How to perform a professional mix-down

How various studios are designed and how their monitors work

Electronic music and beat matching

Sync and automation

Recording and mixing ins and outs

Surround mixing

How to deal with clients

QUESTION: Which is better: to learn audio in a real recording studio, or on a trendy college campus?

ANSWER: You know the answer. The best place to learn audio engineering is from a professional who has been recording music for years, of course.

WHY? Because traditional colleges and trade schools can never duplicate what you will learn in a real recording studio. They are just not equipped to do it.

The Recording Connection Audio Institute gives you everything you would learn in a traditional recording school, plus the real world knowledge and information your mentor will give you, garnered from years of audio engineering experience.

Learn how these apprentices became success stories:

“Surprisingly, I found that the music industry isn&rsquo;t dramatically different from genre to genre. Each artist, whether Hip-Hop or Country, still requires an isolated environment to record vocals, vocal correction software like Melodyne, cleverly and efficiently used compression, equalizers and effects and a digital DAW that brings it all together like Pro Tools. In some sense, all music being produced today is Electronic Music. It all requires a time code, a sample rate, a bit depth and a digital distribution medium such as CD, itunes, Beatport, etc. I was happy to find that my knowledge didn&rsquo;t necessarily have to restrict me to any one specific corner of the music industry.”

Doug Benscoter
Fort Worth, TX

“I started getting comfortable with my abilities about halfway through my studies. After learning the console, I started digging deeper and deeper into the actual production aspect. I certainly became more open to using certain &ldquo;tricks&rdquo; that would add new dimensions to the songs.”

Elliot Huff
Cherry Hill, NJ

“The most surprising thing was how simple the set up was. You got your monitor, few speakers, and control board. I’m walking into it pretty familiar, of course, but not as comfortable as I would want to be. There’s a lot of buttons! Yet, once you dive in you realize it’s all synced in and laid out in labeled columns for you to pick up pretty quickly. That was so awesome to me. Few weeks in i was comfortable. I had studio experience before so I didn’t feel like I was being thrown into a cage of wolves. My teacher eased me into it pretty good. Although, I’m still not as comfortable as i would like to be. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist.”

Mark Maksymiuk
Sterling Heights, MI

“I am currently in the process of building a record company in the Detroit area. The information that I learned while at the Recording Connection helped to shape how I approach music production. It is a skill that I use nearly every day, throughout the day.”

“When I was at the studio, and Meek Mill was their recording, the engineer who worked at the studio had to stay hours after they left to help mix the tracks. I’m guessing he was there till about 8 the next morning. Though what surprised me about myself was the pure performance level I had to go from place to place in my day to then taking public transportation to the studio afterwards. I remember when I was living in North Philadelphia, I had to walk to the subway, ride it for about thirty minutes, and then walk from the subway to the studio. Then reverse it, and do the same thing. All that after I had class, and work. Sounds simple. But I guess I could say that I was proud of myself for starting to do what I had to do to get to where I wanted to be in life.”

Linda Yockey
Las Vegas, NV

“Since going through Recording Connection, I’ve learned how to put together tracks on Pro Tools. I’ve also gained experience in producing music and making demos. I’m hoping to use this knowledge to be able to create my own demos at home and eventually create demos for other artists so that they can share their music with the world.”

“Life when I first came to the studio was very interesting and everything was so new and exciting. I was as open as possible to pick up and learn what ever I could with my time at the studio. I wanted to meet as many people as possible and chat with them about myself and what I thought about music. I also tried to share my thoughts and ideas with others at the studio and even taught people a thing or two about things they were having trouble with or did not know.”

Chelsey Heidenreich
Spokane, WA

“My own music experience helps me collaborate with others. I respect the passion that others have for their music as well as the hard work they have done to reach for their goals. It is rewarding to see the satisfaction from a client when they hear their professional recording . My ability to work with the latest technology and learn and share with others is an asset that&rsquo;s valuable in the music industry.”

STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

DO YOU WANT TO BE AN AUDIO ENGINEER?

by Brian Kraft
Chief Academic Officer and COO
for Recording, Radio, Film and Culinary Connection

The first image that comes to mind when we thing about an audio engineer is someone in a recording studio sitting behind a massive console, mixing down music tracks. Indeed, that is a large part of what audio engineers do, but certainly does not cover the full scope of what a career in audio engineering encompasses.

In addition to knowing about signal flow, room dynamics, and having a good ear, the successful audio engineer must not only know how to relate to creative individuals, he must know how to capture the sound that is desired. A good audio engineer can make bad talent sound good. A bad audio engineer can ruin the sound of the best artist in the world.

There are two main tasks that make up audio engineering. Capturing the various components, or tracks, that will make up the final recording and then "juggling" these tracks to produce the final mix. The first step is dependent on the choice of microphones and direct inputs, microphone placement, room acoustics; the second relies heavily on creating a hard copy of the vision that is in the engineers head.

Realistically, many audio engineers can do both of these at a very high level. To stand out in the crowd—to be successful, the audio engineer must also have some entrepreneurial skills. Almost every large city has dozens of recording studios; the successful audio engineer is not necessarily the one with the best ear, or the one with the access to the latest gear, but more often than not, the one who has the best connections with those who make the decisions on which recording studio to book.

At the Recording Connection we believe that while many audio schools can teach the basic recording techniques that are necessary in the studio, they all fail miserably when it comes to the entrepreneurial part of being an audio engineer. That's because they teach audio in the classroom and in on-campus recording studio labs. Not a client in sight. This totally and completely changes the dynamic of what takes place inside the recording studio. It is impossible to "fake" a real client recording session. When money is on the line, real world deadlines in effect, and creative people are demanding satisfaction, there's no time to be learning on the job. That's why the Recording Connection places its students inside a real recording studio environment from day one.

Recording Connection students are not just learning the craft of becoming a proficient audio technician; they are learning the realities of the recording studio business. It's what separates the men from the boys; the successful graduate from the out-of-work one. It's why the Recording Connection has a job placement rate of 72%—our students graduate with the audio engineering skills, the real-world, hands-on experience, the music industry connections, and the understanding of what it takes to make it in the real world. No other audio engineering school can say the same.